A Tale of Two Cookie Presses. Part I

Greetings Blog readers! I am SO sorry I was MIA for the entire month of March! Between a vacation to Jamaica, a business trip to D.C. and trying to keep up with all the wedding nonsense I honestly did not bake a single thing for an entire month. Inconceivable! But, I'm back with part one of a two part series on a little invention that was until now foreign and unfamiliar to me: The cookies press. Now, one would think with the copious amounts of baking I do (except in March) that I would have used one of these thingy-ma-doos before. However, that was not the case. Fortunately for me I recieved not one, but TWO cookie presses from my lovely family (and family-to-be) for Christmas. It's taken me this long to put one to use, but hopefully in the next week or so I will Christen the other one as well, and then compare...

Since I'm new at this whole cookie press thing I decided to start with a really simple buttery spritz recipe.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp almond exctract

1/s tsp salt

2 1/4 cups flour

powdered sugar for dusting

First cream together your butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. Add in your egg and almond extract, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Then mix in your remaining ingredients until just combined.

At this point I picked out two shapes to use with my press. I decided to try out the pampered chef press first, as it looked a little less intimidating.

Stuff your cookie press full of dough.....

And start pressing! Admittedly, this took me a little while to figure out. At first I was cranking way too much dough out, you really only need a little bit. Also, the cookies need to actually stick to the cookie sheet so parchment paper is a no go. I made a huge mess in the beginning, but after a little tweaking, I was pressing cute little flowers....

And cute little diamonds!

Bake at 400 degrees for 6 or 7 minutes. I have a very hot oven so 6 minutes was plenty...

Doesn't the above photo look like a Pampered Chef Commercial? They should start reading my blog! :)

Now clearly, my shapes could use a little work. I'm sure with practice the weird little tentacle-like appendages will happen less and less.

Ta-da!

I finished them off with a powdered-sugar sprinkle....

Yummy! These are simple, buttery little cookies and were actually very quick and easy once I figured out the new contraption. There are tons of different plates that came with the press for different shapes so, I'm sure there will be much more fun to come.

Coming up (hopefully this week) I'll give the other press a try, and do a comparison! That one also doubles as a frosting-dispenser. I need more cabinet space for all of this nifty stuff.

Happy Baking!